Chasing the scent of Love, Truth, Beauty, and Mirth, wherever it may lead.

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Norfolk Elects

(Pssst!)

What About

Those Pesky Floods?

In the Norfolk, VA,
municipal elections on May 3, I voted with my fellow citizens in two out of
three contests.

McClellan

In my
home Ward 6 I voted for an innovative outsider, Andrea McClellan, to replace
incumbent Barclay Winn on City Council. I came to that decision after I took an
online preference test on a range of local issues. My preferences put me over
60% in line with Ms. McClellan, who unseated Winn and also defeated the
third-place candidate, Warren Stewart, an educator.

For
school board in Ward 6 I had the choice between Noelle Gabriel, an incumbent,
and Carter Smith, a business consultant. Gabriel has a day job as a
pediatrician in a local children’s hospital. Where she finds the time to
practice children's’ medicine, serve on the school board, and raise a family,
too, is beyond me, but I voted for her, and she won over her opponent,

Gabriel

business
consultant Carter Smith, who seemed abrasive in his public comments and had no significant
experience with education.

But the
main event of the night was the contest for mayor, an office vacated by the man
who’s held it for 22 years. Until 2006 his office was appointed by City
Council, but in 2008 Norfolk held
its first mayoral election, which Fraim won by a large majority, becoming the
city’s first elected mayor.

As I
understand local history, giving voters the choice of mayor was another step in
the slow process of Norfolk’s
liberalization from an oligarchy to something like a limited republican form of
government where the oligarchs give up some small fraction of their power to
assure social order.

That era
of transition from liberal oligarchy to limited populism, which Mayor Fraim
oversaw, is over. Other, more diverse forces are in play now.

Alexander

Replacing
Mayor Fraim is Kenny Alexander, a Norfolk native,
presently a Virginia state
senator, and not only the first new mayor in 22 years but the first
African-American mayor in Norfolk
history.

I voted
for Andy Protogyro on the basis of a televised candidates’ debate. I thought
Protogyro, who presently sits on Council, seemed better prepared to be mayor
than Alexander or Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe. Obviously, half of Norfolk
disagreed with me.

Half of Norfolk, it
turns out, is 28%, which is twice the turn-out which reelected Fraim in 2014.

Nevertheless,
I’m happy with the peoples’ choice. It seems right to me, a positive step
forward in Norfolk’s evolving image of itself as an international city, yet
still American Southern to the bone.

But what
about sea-level rise? What about the human contribution to climate change? Will
the incoming Mayor Alexander sacrifice his roots to the rising seas?

Now that
these candidates have been elected, maybe they’ll talk more about those less
popular matters.